General consensus of "The Last Templar" was of a reasonable read with a very disappointing ending. Scoring was averaged of about 6 out of 10.

Character development was poor. Great action scenes. Well researched and good story jumps into the past.

Our next book is "Paradigms Lost" by John Casti.

The Commonwelath Games 2006 in Melbourne was a delightful competition and Melbourne was packed with people from all over the Commonwealth countries and all over Australia.

I had the chance to be part of this event and benefit from a few photo shooting sessions.

In this section of my website, I would like to share with you my experience, hoping that you might find it enjoyable.

Experiments in sports photography: Cycling

The shots below were taken on 26/03/2006 during the Commonwealth Games 2006, 100 Km cycling competition for Women and Men.

I have made a few mistakes during the shooting session but by the end of it, I was getting better results.

Here's a list of tips I got out of today's exercise:

1. Understand the sports and study the venue. Don't leave it till the last minute like I did.
2. Learn about the competitors and their style. I did not even know who the contestants were.
3. Use a high speed ISO film. I used 1600 ISO.
4. Take your shots with a large depth of field as focusing is a bit hard at high speed. I was using an apparture range of 13 to 22.
5. Do not stand in hard sun light or in the shadow, pick a well lit area with soft light. In some of the picture below, you will notice that faces are not recognizable. The colours came out bright as intended but the faces were a bit on the dark side.
6. Use the flash when in a dark spots or when cyclists are riding in the shadow. When using the flash, pick your shots as the flash might not recharge fast enough to allow you another chance at shooting your target.
7. Pick a long stretch or road and move your camera horizontally at the same speed as your subject. I found that keeping the cyclist in the middle of the frame while having the lense at its widest angle produces the best results.
8. When panning with your subject, do experiment with slow shutter speeds. Reduce the shutter speed to capture the effect of speed (a blurry background with a focused cyclist).
9. Do not zoom too much, you can always crop later. It especially applies to shooting on bends and during downhill rides as cyclists tend to pick up speed.
10. Choose a hilly area and stand on the uphill, you'll get plenty of time to shoot the competitors and some interesting facial expressions. It's a bit hard for the contestants and easy to photograph.

How many times have you thought you had a strong opinion about something?

Does it happen often to you?

Regardless of what I do, I find things, daily, around me spinning out of synch with my expectation. I have this urge to define how they should spin, but found, through experience, bitching about them to be more satisfying. HEHEHE!

The oportunity has arisen for my bitching to be posted under this space, and so it goes...

WARNING: Do not proceed further if you disagree or are offended by strong opinion.

The photos below were taken during a few of my business trips to France.

You will find in this section a collection of photos I have taken over the years since I have become a hobbyist photographer.

Please honour us by leaving a critique.

I hope you enjoy your photo browsing sessions.

The full album can be accessed on the following URL: http://www.hoohee.com/Photos

If you're like me and like photography, enjoy these few pictures from Melbourne.

These pictures were taken a couple of days ago with my Canon EOS Kiss (aka 350 D) digial camera between the hours of 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM.

The photos were left unedited. No special effects whatsoever.

Taken with a 28-200 lens and an attached UV filter (for protection mostly).

If you would like to have a bigger version (up to 3456 x 2304 pixels) of these pictures, please drop me a request stating the intended use.

               Realto Towers                                  Realto - another view                                    Bridge

         Flinders with bridge                                          Flinders                                         Flinders Station

               Federation Square            Yarra River with MCG in background                     Yarra River

              Southgate                                Melbourne Aquarium

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2. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/architec/8_ar_da2_1uzr.asp
3. Quick and dirty: using sp_detach_db and sp_attach_db system stored procedures.
http://www.swynk.com/friends/krishnan/movedatabase.asp

WARNING: READ ON AND RUN ONLY IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

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